With Labor Day weekend coming up, and outdoor parties and barbecues on the horizon, it's good to have a classic guacamole recipe in your back pocket. Although I don't have brothers or sisters, I never felt lonely when I was growing up.
My mother and father had siblings to spare, and my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins gathered often -- to celebrate birthdays, holidays, half birthdays, television events.
One of the main reasons I wanted to move back to Los Angeles from New York was to give the Nuni (then just a twinkle in her parents' eye) that family and community that I grew up with. The menu varies -- my mother makes mean spare ribs, my aunt often grills sausages.
My grandmother's fallback is barbecued chi...

Back in the day when I lived in New York, I was more than a little homesick.
I pined and yearned for my home state of California, and pounced on everything I could find that reminded me of home.
I wore flipflops at the very first sign of spring in the city (and narrowly avoided frostbite in the process),
I saw the movie Sideways 3 times in the theaters, and bought the DVD when it was released; I traveled all the way to TENTH AVENUE to find a tiny taqueria in the back of a bodega that sold real tacos;
I listened to the Beach Boys on repeat.
So you can imagine how happy I was when the last apartment we lived in in Manhattan was right next door to a California Pizza Kitchen (it also had a balcony, which means my poor husband wa...

Spring has sprung.
Sure, I live in LA, where a sunny day could just as easily mean December as it could April.
People are always exhibiting various degrees of suntan (usually related to their house's proximity to the beach), and flip flops are a year round fashion statement. Fortunately, I like to frequent the farmers' markets (particularly the Hollywood Farmer's Market, which I think is the best farmer's market in Los Angeles), and the signs of spring are unmistakeable.
Strawberries are a big tip off, trucked in from Oxnard, and so are the lilacs that are only around for the early birds.
The very first tomatoes are appearing, but the vegetable that says "spring" to me is asparagus.
The thin and tender stalks are all over the m...

I have vivid childhood memories of dyeing Easter Eggs.
We always made my family's traditional Craftsman flower eggs, but I also spent many a spring break
waiting impatiently for the eggs to take on a deep color sitting in vats of vinegar with those little Paas tablets.
Now that I am the mom, I try to recreate for the Nuni some of my own childhood joys, so I buy dozens of eggs each Easter, ripe for the decorating. What I am faced with as an adult that I didn't realize as a carefree kid is that after the fun of the Easter Egg hunt comes a long slong of trying to use dozens of hard boiled eggs.
There are only so many plain hard boiled eggs you can eat, though a dash of tabasco hel...

There seems to be this idea out there that kids will not eat vegetables.
There are suggestions to disguise the vegetables as trees, or puree them and hide them in the brownies.
I just don't get it.
Sure, some kids are neophobes -- they will view anything unfamiliar with suspicion.
And some kids won't touch anything green.
But I think it's our job as parents not only to get them to EAT vegetables, in some sneaky and underhanded manner, but to actually get them to like vegetables, as vegetables.
That's going to serve them a lot better in life than never eating spinach unless it's part of a cupcake. The challenge is in how to do that.
And there is no answer that works for every kid.
Try different things.
Prepare vegetables...

As I may have mentioned before, I generally receive a several cookbooks for major gift-giving occasions.
This isn't surprising; after all, I have a known cookbook problem, and I have several cookbooks on my Amazon wishlist.
I'm fairly familiar with the major cookbooks that are released, what the buzz is, and what the classics are.
But this Christmas my aunt (who is a fantastic cook) gave me a book I had never heard of -- the Auberge of the Flowering Hearth, by Roy Andries De Groot.
"It's the book that inspired Alice Waters," she told me.
I thanked her politely and added the book to my already crowded shelf of food and cookbooks. A month or so later, I had finished my book club book for that month and w...

When I was a little girl, my favorite restaurant was a steakhouse in my hometown called the Sawmill.
The interior was one of those 1980's restaurants with no windows, an open kitchen, dim lighting, a terrarium, rough-hewn wood beams and leather club chairs, but to very small me it was heaven.
I always ordered a steak sandwich and a Shirley Temple (in a short glass, with extra cherries), but what really made the restaurant my favorite was the old fashioned salad bar.
Young children don't usually have that much control over what they eat, but at a salad bar I was master of my destiny.
After much trial and error (what is the POINT of baby corn?) I settled on the winning combination of romaine lettuce, spinach (this was before the era of u...

Something funny has been happening this winter -- kale has become a staple in my refrigerator.
A week rarely passes when I don't buy a bunch, either from the farmer's market or during a Whole Foods run.
It's a combination of being drawn to the purported health benefits of kale, admiring its ruffled appearance and just plain liking the taste.
Kale has a savory heartiness that doesn't contain the metallic tones of spinach or the sometimes bitter flavors of collards or mustard greens.
Somet...

Well Harrumph. Today is World Nutella Day and I was fully planning to participate.
I had at least two projects in mind and I even attempted them, but someone stole my cooking mojo and both my experiments were abject failures.
If you'd like some Nutella goodness I offer up these Nutella Nanaimo Bars from last week and I hope you enjoy them.
You can also check out this Nutella Cheesecake from Eat, Live, Travel, Write, this ...